This is a difficult time of year for Joe Kelly.
While always keen to honour veterans on Remembrance Day, Kelly suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, and is grateful for the help provided by Freddie, his six-year-old Yellow Lab service dog.
Kelly, a Sault native, is a former Canadian Army Master Corporal who served in the military from 1995 to 2014.
Cleaning up at the site of the Swissair Flight 111 disaster off the coast of Peggys Cove, Nova Scotia in September 1998, plus tours of duty in Bosnia and Afghanistan, traumatized Kelly.
“It was multiple experiences and trauma…it broke me, I was suicidal and I had to be hospitalized for a couple of weeks,” Kelly told reporters at Royal Canadian Legion Branch 25 Thursday.
“It put me over the edge and I needed help.”
“I was paired up with Freddie, and the benefits are amazing if you’re partnered up with an animal like this…it allowed me to come off meds over time, plus the good feeling of having an animal helped as well.”
Kelly said the evidence is anecdotal at this point, but stated many traumatized people given a service animal are able to come off medication altogether, or at least reduce the amount of medication they take.
“When I first got him I was a recluse, I never left my house very much,” Kelly said.
“Having Freddie forced me, in small steps, to leave the house and do what I could for him to keep him active, therefore I got the benefit of being comfortable leaving the house again, then out into the stores and into the public.”
Kelly was medically discharged from the military due to PTSD and the married father of three is now back home in the Sault.
“The week leading up to Remembrance Day is particularly hard…we as soldiers and first responders don’t ever forget the friends we’ve lost.”
Even though his family is a great support group, Kelly said a dog’s heightened senses enable it to detect mood changes in a human, and a service dog is able to provide protection and support when family members are not nearby.
Freddie was provided to Kelly by Courageous Companions, a non-profit group which supplies trained service dogs to military veterans who suffer from physical or psychological injuries such as PTSD.
“Freddie’s training was already there, we bonded right away,” Kelly said.
Kelly was at Royal Canadian Legion Branch 25 to meet with Sault artist Doug Bradford Thursday.
All proceeds from sales of one of Bradford’s latest paintings are going to Canada’s National Service Dogs program, which provides service animals to veterans.
The painting depicts a Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) Halifax bomber shot down by an enemy plane over the Netherlands in July, 1943.
All but one of the bomber’s crew members were killed in the attack.
The lone survivor became a POW.
The deceased Canadian airmen are buried in a well-kept cemetery in the small Dutch town of Ten Boer.
A trunk containing letters from one of the deceased crew members was bought on eBay, kindling interest in the plane’s story and leading to Bradford’s painting of the doomed Halifax bomber.
The squadron code painted on the bomber’s fuselage is LQ-M, hence the painting’s title ‘M is for Mother.’
Bradford said he was moved to visit the burial place of the crew in Ten Boer.
“I was quite humbled to be standing in front of those grave stones.”
“I love doing military artwork,” said Bradford, who has produced paintings honouring the Sault-based 49th Field Artillery Regiment, the Royal Canadian Navy and Canada’s role in the Korean War.
Several of his paintings are in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.
“Meeting Mr. Kelly and listening to his story, we’re fortunate we didn’t have to experience that,” Bradford said.
